Jekyll is a static site generator that transforms your plain text into beautiful static web sites and blogs. It can be use for a documentation site, a blog, an event site, or really any web site you like. It’s fast, secure, easy, and open source. It’s also the same site generator I use to maintain my open source documentation. Today, we’ll be installing and configuring Jekyll using the Chirpy theme. We configure the site, create some pages with markdown, automatically build it with a GitHub action and even host it for FREE on GitHub pages. If you don’t want to host in the cloud, show how to host it on your own server or even in Docker.
Install Dependencies
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sudo apt update
sudo apt install ruby-full build-essential zlib1g-dev git
To avoid installing RubyGems packages as the root user:
If you are using bash (usually the default for most)
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echo '# Install Ruby Gems to ~/gems' >> ~/.bashrc
echo 'export GEM_HOME="$HOME/gems"' >> ~/.bashrc
echo 'export PATH="$HOME/gems/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc
If you are using zsh (you know if you are)
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echo '# Install Ruby Gems to ~/gems' >> ~/.zshrc
echo 'export GEM_HOME="$HOME/gems"' >> ~/.zshrc
echo 'export PATH="$HOME/gems/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.zshrc
source ~/.zshrc
Install Jekyll bundler
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gem install jekyll bundler
Creating a site basked on Chirpy Starter
Visit https://github.com/cotes2020/jekyll-theme-chirpy#quick-start
After creating a site based on the template, clone your repo
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git clone git@<YOUR-USER-NAME>/<YOUR-REPO-NAME>.git
then install your dependencies
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cd repo-name
bundle
After making changes to your site, commit and push then up to git
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git add .
git commit -m "made some changes"
git push
Jekyll Commands
serving your site
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bundle exec jekyll s
Building your site in production mode
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JEKYLL_ENV=production bundle exec jekyll b
This will output the production site to _site
Building Site in CI
This site already works with GitHub actions, just push it up and check the actions Tab.,
For GitLab you can see the pipeline I built for my own docs site here
Building with Docker
Create a Dockerfile with the following
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FROM nginx:stable-alpine
COPY _site /usr/share/nginx/html
Build site in production mode
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JEKYLL_ENV=production bundle exec jekyll b
Then build your image:
docker build .
Markdown Examples
If you need some help with markdown, check out the markdown cheat sheet
I have lots of examples in my documentation site repo. Just click on the Raw button to see the code behind the page.